Community Event Jobs

Community events such as road races, marathons, parades and carnivals are a great way to gain events experience and contribute directly to your community.

Some community events like the Boston or New York Marathons, which we profile in this section, are large-scale community events that take extensive planning and volunteers. While other community events like town parades are lesser in scale. In this section we will take a look at some of the ways you can get involved with community events in both paid positions as well as a volunteer.

How To Find Community Events Jobs

Community event jobs are most commonly organized through a city council or city government. They tend to occur every year and are put on by a group of volunteers or paid government officials. Often times, event-planning companies are commissioned to assist with bigger events although a great deal of the work is done through volunteers. Even local area businesses like restaurants and hotels will sponsor the event by providing merchandise, discounted rooms and services or will assist in marketing and promotion efforts for the event. As it turns out local area business employees often find themselves working and volunteering for community events that their business sponsors.

A good way to become a part of community events such as parades, carnivals and marathons is to research the event you most want to be a part of. Most events such as a city parade or marathon will have an organizing committee or board who puts together a budget and hires out for the event. It would be impossible for us to list all of the community events where you could gain paid and unpaid experience, so instead we will feature some of the best known events that occur annually.

One of the best aspects of community events? Nearly everyone can get involved. For large events such as a parade or town festival the range of paid and unpaid jobs varies extensively. If you have a desire to donate your time, there will certainly be a way for you to get involved.

Types of Community Events Jobs

Community events jobs vary depending on the type of event that is underway. Regardless, it’s common to see the following jobs in almost any large community event or marathon: event administration, event executives, board executives, accounting, IT, event scheduling and organization staff, entertainment booker, entertainment review, field staff, merchandise sales, event security, set up, clean up, recycling, customer service crews, medical staff, local community club volunteers, parking attendants, crowd control and of course volunteers.

Where To Apply

For most community events jobs like marathons, other road races and parades, you can apply online (they almost always have a website) or directly to the board or committee in charge of organizing the event. Simply researching the event you want to be apart of and looking for their jobs or volunteer sections is a good place to begin. Other ways to apply are working with sponsors of the event, the venue where the event will take place, or through the event planning company that is helping to organize the event.

Take a look at some of the following community events to see how you can get directly involved and to gain ideas on ways to find employment locally.